Prince
(1958-2017)
Inducted 2007
Prince Rogers Nelson has been widely called the most important musician of his generation internationally. He was born in Minneapolis and was named after his father’s jazz band, The Prince Rogers Trio. When young, his father bought him his first guitar and drum set, and in junior high he joined his first band, Grand Central. By the time he entered Central High School in South Minneapolis, Prince had been producing his own musical arrangements and his band evolved into the band Champagne, by then playing his original music. In 1976 he started to work on a demo tape which led him to a bidding war where Prince signed with major label Warner Bros. Records. In 1982, Prince released his fifth record entitled 1999, a double album which “broke” Prince into the mainstream in the USA and internationally, selling over 3 million copies. He followed with the 1984 soundtrack album Purple Rain, which sold more than 15 million copies and spent 24 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. For that record, Prince won six Grammy Awards and an Academy Award for the massively-successful movie of the same name, much of which was filmed at legendary First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis. In the mid-1980s Prince opened Paisley Park Recording Studio and Record Company, based in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Prince continued to feverishly record and release music and tour the world- by now selling-out outdoor sports stadiums worldwide. In the 1980s and ’90s, he was one of a handful of ultra-successful music performers worldwide. PRN was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Prince’s untimely passing in 2017 was deeply felt especially in Minnesota, but reverberated worldwide- enough so that the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France was lit in purple lights in his honor. Prince’s recording studio Paisley Park is now a very well-visited museum in homage to him. The Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in New Ulm, Minnesota has a large display of his memorabilia, much of which was donated by The Prince Legacy Foundation in 2023. In 2025 Prince will be awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award from The Recording Academy of The United States.
“From the heart of Minnesota, here comes The Purple Yoda!” (lyrics from the 2011 video below).
